Thursday, April 30, 2009

I've finally gotten this together. I have to admit that it was rather fun to do. The thing that I learned working on the colors was that I needed to keep the warmth of the color as they got lighter. My first attempts had several of my paler colors included. While the values were right the set seemed duller then I wanted. That was when it occurred to me that the colors got warmer as they got paler and that adding white to them made them paler but also cooler.

This brought up a couple of interesting colors that I have been thinking about for some time. One was a discussion I had with an artist from west Texas about painting the skies there. I've noticed in my few trips to the southwest, the sky goes from a cobalt above you to almost a viridian on the horizon. This probably has to do with the yellow of the light being shorter, etc, etc, I'm forgetting my physics at the moment. Anyway I was working with a very greenish blue as one of the colors that I wanted to use so I started mixing it with various yellows and finally hit on a great combination of colors. These are the color group #720-724.

I've also gotten a couple of new pigments that I was experimenting with. They are both transparent iron oxides, one yellow and one red. Think of them as an intense raw sienna and burnt sienna. I use the yellow to mix with the bright yellow that I have to give it a nice earthiness while still keeping the intensity. The same worked with the red to give a good range of bright but not electric colors. These are the colors #740-743.